Games * Design * Art * Culture

Friday, September 29, 2006

EU III

On the one hand, I am so salivating at the thought of Europa Universalis III.

On the other hand, I'm looking at this coverage and thinking: uh oh. For three reasons:

3D? Oh yeah, everything has to be 3D these days. But from what I can tell from the screenshots, this means that the soldiers standing atop your provinces are 3D models instead of sprites. That is to say, no impact on gameplay, and really, why bother.

Two: Random events rather than historical events. In a way, this makes for less predictable gameplay, which is good; but on the other hand, the tie to historicity was, for me, a big part of the draw in EU II (and why, when I fire it up, which I still do from time to time, I almost always use the Alternative General Campaign/Event Exchange Project mod, which adds scads of additional historical events. In other words, what I crave is more historicity, not less; the fact that Paradox games are based on sound research, and that, say, playing Portugal is a hugely different experience from play Austria (let alone the Moghuls) is a big part of the reason I like this game. So going for random events may be a smart decision, I don't know, I assume they have a finger on the pulse of their audience--but it alienates me, the only redeeming feature being that I'm sure the Paradox mod community will quickly get a more historical version together.

Three--it sounds like they're adding a lot of complexity, which is not in itself a good thing. Yes, I understand they feel the need to do a substantial update to II, and that probably means adding some of the features of Victoria and Crusader Kings, modifying as appropriate for the era. But Paradox has a tendency to bite off more than they can chew, ultimately releasing games that aren't really adequately tested or balanced, and I'm worried that this will be the case here, too. Sometimes they recover in the patches--with Crusader Kings, they eventually got a fine game, but with Victoria, it never really became a satisfying product.

If it were me, I'd choose one or two things to update, with 'random' and 'historial' versions, and spend the time polishing gameplay.

But there's still no doubt I'll be buying on the instant of release.

Now, if only I could get them to let us offer their older product, at least. Mutter mutter.

posted by Greg at 9:36 PM 660 comments

660 Comments:

I bought EU I as part of three-pack of older games. Cost me $5.00 at the "Big Lots!" discount outlet.

If they're willing to sell the rights for that sort of rock-bottom packaging, I'm surprised they don't go for distribution via MG.

By Stefan Jones, at 11:51 PM

I understand Paradox's game design reasons for moving away from historical successions, the predictable arrival of Prinz Eugen and Columbus and an event system more similar to the one in Crusader Kings - more context dependent than random - but certainly not historical. And I avoided the AGC/EEP because I thought it was too straight-jacketed in some ways. For long stretches, the history was playing me instead of me playing history.

But, you are completely right about the importance of historicity in EU. The fact that this was a stage you shared with Elizabeth I, the Time of Troubles and the End of the Aztecs was central to what the game was about. Ripping that stuff out could seriously diminish a lot of people's fun. Taking all the real history out may let me make my own, but it also removes the easiest point of entry and the familiarity that is central to the EU experience.

By Troy Goodfellow, at 11:36 AM